El Orfanato


Dir: Juan Anotonio Bayona
105 Mins
2007












Laura (Belen Rueda) buys up her childhood orphanage home with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) with a view to making it into an orphanage for disabled children. Her son (Roger Princep) starts to converse with an imaginary friend at the orphanage and display worrying behaviour. Suspicion is further aroused when Laura discovers an elderly lady snooping around her grounds. During a party Lauras son disappears and Laura starts pursuing the possibilty that the imaginary friends are not so imaginary.

The horror genre is awash with remakes and ineffective homages right now so it is refreshing to see a very effective albeit flawed horror come out of the Spanish market. My main reservation is in seeing the film chart towards thriller territory in the final third but it is throughout a tauntly handled piece of film making. It also has the benefit that it will appeal and has some degree of success in satisfying the horror genre fan and those less keen on the genre. For this reason, for a subtitled film, El Orfanato could do brisk box office buisness. In the first hour El Orfanato conjures up a very oppressive and eerie atmosphere that has echoes of The Shining (1980) and Rosemarys Baby (1968) in tone. As with these two films the home is made an alien place with strange goings on. As with Danny and the Twins in The Shining, El Orfanato also puts children back to thier rightful position, to be feared. There is a very eerie scene with a cave early on and Roger Princep as the son does an excellent job here in being both familiar and uncanny. In the chase after a lost child El Orfanato draws a favourable comparison with that masterpiece of the uncanny Don't Look Now (1973). The shame is that the film charts away from this territory intent on providing an answer to its dark supernatural secrets.

The script is adept and is certainly original in its manner of blending generic hallmarks of horror and thriller. The supernatural with the natural, if you like. One does become convinced during the film that the direction is more suited to the supernatural and uncanny parts of the narrative though. Bayona certainly has a talent for the imagery, framing and timing of the uncanny. Bayona makes some images and scenes very memorable. The only time he fails to show a restraint to let the film speak for itself is, unfortunetly, at the ending. Much will be made of the ending but it is too overblown to have any genuine emotional ressonance, no matter the well plotted trajectory of the narrative. Although it is a fundamental criticism to want more of what a film does very well, at the expense of other material, El Orfanato has a lot to reccommend it over the glut of other horror in the market place at the moment. Moreover The acting fits in with the piece very sucessfully, all concerned have good performances coaxed from them. Bayona is doubtless going to be a director to watch. Here he has made a flawed but engaging and often creepy film and it is a noticable calling card. It is nonetheless a shame the ending of the piece is mishandled and becomes mawkish. The good news is that if he hits upon the right material he might well make something very special.
4 / 6